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New credit card skimmer worked in plain sight at Aldi stores

Police in Lower Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania have spotted a group of thieves who are placing totally camouflaged skimmers on top of charge card terminals in Aldi stores. The skimmers, which the gang placed in plain sight of surveillance video cameras, look precisely like the original charge card terminals but would store debit card numbers and PINs of unsuspecting shoppers.

“While Aldi payment terminals in the United States are capable of accepting more secure chip-based card transactions, ” writes security researcher Brian Krebs. “The company has yet to enable chip payments( although it does accept mobile contactless payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay ). This is important because these overlay skimmers are designed to steal card data stored on the magnetic stripe when clients swipe their cards.”

Interestingly, commenters reported that many Aldi stores subsistence chipped EMV credit card but that they would often videotape over the slots and ask users to swipe instead.

“The Aldi stores near me get chip readers early last year with Apple Pay and everything enabled. After~ 5 months they videotapeed over the card insert slot and now involve customers to swipe again, ” wrote one commenter. “I asked one of the managers and he said corporate necessitated them to switch back because’ swipes are faster.’”

I love these tales primarily because phase of sale terminals are widely unguarded and offer the best of security theatre – you think you’re safe because they look like the egg sacs of some armored brute but, with a quick addition of a skimmer, you create something that is deeply unsafe. That this skimmer objective up at a town of only 12,000 spirits is especially poignant.